Eighty — that being the number (and not eight) saved from the flood according to the Mohammedan belief (Abulfeda, Anteislam. p. 17). The historian Elmacin mentions that the Emperor Heraclius went up, and visited this as " the place of the ark." Here, or in the neighborhood, was once a famous Nestorian mon- astery— "the Monastery of the Ark," destroyed by lightning in A.D. 776 (see Asseman, Bibl. Or. ii, 113). The credulous Jew, Benjamin of Tudela, says that a mosque was built at Mount Judi, "of the remains of the ark," by the Caliph Omar. Kinneir, in describing his journey from Jezirah along the left bank of the Ti- gris to Nahr Van, says (Trav. p. 453), " We had a chain of mountains running parallel with the road on the left hand. This range is called the Juda Dag (i. c. mountain) by the Turks, and one of the inhabitants of Nahr Van assured me that he had frequently seen the remains of Noah's ark on a lofty peak behind that village." (Comp. Rich's Kurdistan, ii, 124.) A French savant, Eugene Bore, who visited those parts, sa)-s the Mohammedan dervishes still maintain here a perpetual!}- burning lamp in an oratory (Revue Fran- raise, vol. xii ; or the Semeur of October 2, 1839). The selection of this range w^as natural to an inhab- itant of tHe Mesopotamian plain ; for it presents an apparently insurmountable barrier on that side, hem- ming in the valley of the Tigris with abrupt declivi- ties so closely that only during the summer months is any passage afforded between the mountain and river (Ainsworth's Travels in track of the Ten Thousand, p. 154). Josephus also quotes Nicolaus Damascenus to the effect that a mountain named Baris, beyond Min- yas, was the spot. This has been identified with Yaraz, a mountain mentioned by St. Martin (Man. sur V Ar- menia, i, 265) as rising to the north of Lake Van ; but the only important mountain in the position indicated is described by recent travellers under the name Seiban Tagh; and we are therefore inclined to accept the emendation of Schroeder, who proposes to read Mc'tatg, the indigenous name of Mount Ararat, for Bdpic. After the disappearance of the Nestorian monastery, the tradition which fixed the site of the ark on Mount Judi appears to have declined in credit, or been chief- ly confined to Mohammedans, and gave place (at least among the Christians of the West) to that which now obtains, and according to which the ark rested on a great mountain in the north of Armenia — to which (so strongly did the idea take hold of the popular belief) was, in course of time, given the very name of Ararat, as if no doubt could lie entertained that it was the Ararat of Scripture. We have seen, however, that in the Bible Ararat is nowhere the name, of a mountain, and by the native Armenians the mountain in ques- tion was never so designated ; it is by them called Mdcis, and by the Turks Aghur-dagh, i. e. "The Heavy or Great Mountain" (see Kampfer, Aman. ii, 428 sq.). The Vulgate and Jerome, indeed, render Ararat by "Armenia," but they do not particularize any one mountain. Still there is no doubt of the antiquity of the tradition of this being (as it is some- times termed) the " Mother of the World." The Per- sians call it Kuh-i-Nuch, " Noah's Mountain." The Armenian et3'mology of the name of the city of Nakhchevan (which lies east of it) is said to be "first place of descent or lodging," being regarded as the place where Noah resided after descending from the mount. It is mentioned by Josephus (Ant. i, 3, 5) under a Greek name of similar import, viz. 'Airo/San?- piov ("landing-place"), and by Ptolemy (v, 13, § 12) as Naxuana ("XaZoudva, see Chesney, Exped. to the Euphrat. i, 145).
1. The mountain thus known to Europeans as Ara- rat consists of two immense conical elevations (one peak considerably lower than the other), towering in massive and majestic grandeur from the valley of the Aras, the ancient Araxes. Smith and Dwight give its position north 57° west of Nakhchevan, and south
ARARAT
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